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OK, having read the GMG back to back, I think it's time to start bugging Paizo about a proper urban adventures book.
What could be in that book ? Let's see:
- Expanded city statblock rules. More qualities, governments and disadvantages.
- Kingmaker settlement building rules, collected and expanded.
- Rules for running a castle (expanded from PF3)
- Expanded chase rules.
- Rules for legal system
- Rules for running a business
- More NPC statblocks
- Urban PrCs, archetypes and other crunch.
That's just off the top of my head. Cityscape was a major letdown by WotC, and I would love a city book done right. Pitch your ideas folks, let know Paizo that you want such a book !
My recommendation to you is to check out any of the Urban Adventures material from 0One Games (PFRPG and OGL). The Road to Revolution series is in the process of being converted from 3.5 to PFRPG, and the Great City Player's Guide is chock-full of urban prestige classes, items and spells.
Disclaimer:
OK, having read the GMG back to back, I think it's time to start bugging Paizo about a proper urban adventures book.
What could be in that book ? Let's see:
- Expanded city statblock rules. More qualities, governments and disadvantages.
- Kingmaker settlement building rules, collected and expanded.
- Rules for running a castle (expanded from PF3)
- Expanded chase rules.
- Rules for legal system
- Rules for running a business
- More NPC statblocks
- Urban PrCs, archetypes and other crunch.That's just off the top of my head. Cityscape was a major letdown by WotC, and I would love a city book done right. Pitch your ideas folks, let know Paizo that you want such a book !
I would be all over this! Pre-order-ready the moment it's announced.
While Cityscape sucked, there are a lot of good 3rd-party products release in the 3.x era. I need to check out the Great City stuff but other useful products I use include:
Cityworks - Fantasy Flight Games
Great do-it-yourself city design book. Also includes excellent advice on running urban adventures.
Shadowspawn's Guide to Sanctuary - Green Ronin
Probably one to skip unless you're a fan of the series since the book is a d20/OGL adaptation of one of fantasy's best-loved cities. Rules for Vigilance (influence of the Guard & Watch on a neighborhood, law & order, crime & punishment, building & structure generation can be applied to Golarion town's cities. Also has good urban adventure recommendations.
Dynasties & Demagogues - Atlas Games
Great resource on running political & intrigue-laden games.
Crime & Punishment - Atlas Games
Best fantasy treatment on laws, crime, trials, & punishments I've seen. If you only get one of these, this is the one to pick, IMO.
I don't know if I want an urban book as much as I would like a Kingdoms/Countries book. So tak the Kingmaker rules and expand them (more options, not more complicated), increase the Kingdom events list, buildings, etc. Include and possibly expand the Mass Combat Rules (I would like to see them before I really decide on that). And whatever else they can come up with along these lines.
I don't know if I want an urban book as much as I would like a Kingdoms/Countries book. So tak the Kingmaker rules and expand them (more options, not more complicated), increase the Kingdom events list, buildings, etc. Include and possibly expand the Mass Combat Rules (I would like to see them before I really decide on that). And whatever else they can come up with along these lines.
Why choose? Let's ask Paizo to do both!
I would be all over this! Pre-order-ready the moment it's announced.While Cityscape sucked, there are a lot of good 3rd-party products release in the 3.x era. I need to check out the Great City stuff but other useful products I use include:
..examples..
I found something useful in each book, including Cityscape.
I would add A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe to the list. The manor system descriptions are another good source for modeling tools of domain, and there is a section on medieval cities, with discussions about size and population factors.
Dynasties & Demagogues and (especially) Crime & Punishment may not be to everyone's taste. I found them to take too "modern" an approach to the topics. This was the same thing I disliked about Eberron (not surprising since Crime & Punishment is written by the creator of Eberron, Keith Baker). That is purely a matter of flavor preference, but it is worth noting.
- Expanded city statblock rules. More qualities, governments and disadvantages.
I imagine we will see some of these in the Campaign Setting books as they come out. There have been many towns and cities described in adventures and sourcebooks to date, and I would expect many more to come. Some of those will probably have new Qualities, Governments, and/or Disadvantages to represent unique traits.
For example, in updating Tamran, the city has no walls. This was done by the Nirmathi to put would-be conquerers at a strategic disadvantage. A new quality "Open City" or "Defiant Citizenry" that plays to the guerilla style and partisan nature of the Nirmathi makes sense to me (Law -2, Danger +5)
~pulls out my notepad and starts to take some notes~
Actually, I'm a Paizo fan but I hope they leave this to other publishers.
1. 0one is doing a great job.
2. Having a different company write this sort of book makes me feel the cities are more cosmopolitan. Another book from the same source as Golarion might (and its a big might I'll grant you) feel like everything is a uniform blandness.
Of course that's just my intuition but between their various guides there's already some urban stuff out there. Since they are responsible for the overall setting it seems more logical for them to stress regional differences and have different city\region books.
Sigurd
So I will throw this in for discussion...
Between the time the new city stat-blocks started to appear, and the GMG's release, I started looking at how to describe neighborhoods in a complimentary manner. What I came up with is this:
Section Walls
Material thickness (hardness xx, yy hit points, break DC zz)Typical Buildings
Height Climb DC
Walls Material (hardness xx, yy hit points, Break DC zz)
Doors Material (hardness xx, yy hit points, Break DC zz)Corruption xx; Crime xx; Economy xx; Law xx; Lore xx; Society xx
Qualities
Danger xxBuilding Ownership
Building type Cost
House xx gpBuilding Rent
Building Type Rent
House xx gp/monthGeneral Expenses
Food 100%
Transport 100%
Goods 100%Upkeep: Destitute: 0 gp/month; Poor: 3 gp/month; Average: 10 gp/month; Wealthy: 100 gp/month; Extravagant: 1,000 gp/month
Standard of Living: AverageWeapons Laws:
Spell Laws:Guard Quality:
Some of this, such as the prices for purchase and rental of homes, is from the existing Pathfinder books (Absalom, Katapesh).
Upkeep: Some areas might not support certain levels of upkeep. The destitute might be chased out of the Noble/Wealthy neighborhoods, while the Slums/Waterfront/Poor Quarter might not have any place where one can live Extravagantly.
Weapon Laws: A guideline for the reaction of the Watch to weapons. Perhaps in the Noble Quarter, anyone not a member of the Watch or of a noble's retinue must "peace-bond" Martial or Exotic weapons. On the other hand, in a dangerous Waterfront area, perhaps no one is allowed in without a weapon.
Spell Laws: Divinations and Enchantment (Compulsion) effects are most likely to be regulated, especially in a capitol city. It may be considered treason to use them against nobles or government officials. Evocation spells are likely to be next in line. Pious communities may ban Arcane casting, and persecute Divine casters not aligned with the accepted deity or deities.
Spell laws may not exist in a low-magic campaign, where the question does not come up often enough to need laws. In a high-magic campaign, I would think them more likely.
Modifiers: No neighborhood should have a modifier whose magnitude is greater than that of the city itself. If the city has a -3 Corruption, no neighborhood should be worse than that (and most should be between 0 and the city's overall value).
Qualities: The ones in the GMG are mostly city-wide, but a few might be neighborhood-specific (such as the Holy Site).
Guard Quality: This is derived in part from the CityWorks mentioned before. An idea of how attentive the guards are in a given neighborhood (probably related to the Crime and/or Law modifiers) gives a base static DC for use of Stealth. The assumption would be that adequately paid and disciplined guards are "Taking 10" most of the time, while poorly-trained or underpaid guards "Take 5" (an idea which may have been credited to Monte Cook in CityWorks, if I recall correctly).
What's always bugged me is I've never been able to find a good source for what's in a settlement. So many times I've had to build a small town, or a village, or what-have-you, and it's always been a chore.
I care less about the fact that there's an X% chance of finding a Y level wizard in a city of size Z than having something that will help me figure out what's in the place the adventurers are going.
The 3.5e Cityscape book listed city districts, which was a half-step in the right direction, but practically speaking was no help with designing a city.
What I'm more interested in is something that I can use when building a thorp, or a town, or a city, and answer questions like:
- What businesses would be in a town of 50 people? 200 people? 1000 people?
- What professions are in every town, vs. ones that are in only some towns?
- In fact, what are the professions (I have yet to see a good list of NPC professions, especially one with information about how commonly they're encountered in settlements)?
- For cities (which are district-based rather than building-based), what districts are almost always there vs. rare?
That, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg. The goal of all of this, for me, have a set of tables and charts I can use to do the basic gruntwork of hamlet/village/town/city creation, so that I can do the good stuff, rather than spending all of my time on the grunt work before I can get to the good stuff.
I was looking for stuff like this at Origins, and I've observed that people love to write prose, which would be great if I was looking for a novel, but people don't like to provide crunchy bits for GMs. They also like to provide books of "ready made towns". Very nice, but I'm less interested in the design skills of the author than what logic (if any) they used to lay out the towns they included.
Good solid content supported by actual game rules is good. Two pages about the philosophy of bakers and their motivations is less good - I walked away from one "City Sourcebook" for just that reason - after reading the whole thing I'd have known more than I ever wanted to know about professions, but still would not be any closer to actually developing a settlement.
Note that I'm certainly not looking for any kind of ruleset that will be used to do things like say "Hey, Varnhold doesn't follow the rules for a town! ... I'm just looking for something that I can use without getting a Ph.D in medieval society :)
What's always bugged me is I've never been able to find a good source for what's in a settlement. So many times I've had to build a small town, or a village, or what-have-you, and it's always been a chore.
I think that Expeditious Retreat Press's A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe addresses this in great detail, including a chart for occupation incidence. It's just a great book for world building.
What's always bugged me is I've never been able to find a good source for what's in a settlement. So many times I've had to build a small town, or a village, or what-have-you, and it's always been a chore.I think that Expeditious Retreat Press's A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe addresses this in great detail, including a chart for occupation incidence. It's just a great book for world building.
That, and if you can find "Cities" (last time I saw it, it was published by Chaosium), it goes into depth on all of the "how many persons are required to support this business", both for large and small settlements.
* cut to save space*
What I'm more interested in is something that I can use when building a thorp, or a town, or a city, and answer questions like:What businesses would be in a town of 50 people? 200 people? 1000 people?
* cut to save space*
This page is rather helpful when determining what businesses are in a town Medieval Demographics.
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What's always bugged me is I've never been able to find a good source for what's in a settlement. So many times I've had to build a small town, or a village, or what-have-you, and it's always been a chore.
I care less about the fact that there's an X% chance of finding a Y level wizard in a city of size Z than having something that will help me figure out what's in the place the adventurers are going.
The 3.5e Cityscape book listed city districts, which was a half-step in the right direction, but practically speaking was no help with designing a city.
What I'm more interested in is something that I can use when building a thorp, or a town, or a city, and answer questions like:
- What businesses would be in a town of 50 people? 200 people? 1000 people?
- What professions are in every town, vs. ones that are in only some towns?
- In fact, what are the professions (I have yet to see a good list of NPC professions, especially one with information about how commonly they're encountered in settlements)?
- For cities (which are district-based rather than building-based), what districts are almost always there vs. rare?
That, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg. The goal of all of this, for me, have a set of tables and charts I can use to do the basic gruntwork of hamlet/village/town/city creation, so that I can do the good stuff, rather than spending all of my time on the grunt work before I can get to the good stuff.
I was looking for stuff like this at Origins, and I've observed that people love to write prose, which would be great if I was looking for a novel, but people don't like to provide crunchy bits for GMs. They also like to provide books of "ready made towns". Very nice, but I'm less interested in the design skills of the author than what logic (if any) they used to lay out the towns they included.
Good solid content supported by actual game rules is good. Two pages about the philosophy of bakers and their motivations is...
yes
that is exactly what i want out of a urban book. tables like climb DC's, break and entering DC's, mercantile rules,
common vs rare:
districts
professions
shops
factions/gangs
guilds
religions (how likely is there to be an actual church or temple)
defenses, structures (like walls, motes, castles, keeps, guardhouse, magical defenses, traps)
defenses, people (like trained military, watch, militia, or anyone with a weapon, cops)
medical (magical vs mundane)
expand to flesh out "urbans" more like
- a town comprised of mostly bridges and towers (or ropes and trees)
- underground towns/dwellings
- difference between a town on the river vs dessert vs forest vs mountains vs underground
- difference between a town of nothing but humans vs dwarves vs elves vs lizardfolk vs goblins vs kobolds and dragons vs aboleth
This page is rather helpful when determining what businesses are in a town Medieval Demographics.* cut to save space*
What I'm more interested in is something that I can use when building a thorp, or a town, or a city, and answer questions like:What businesses would be in a town of 50 people? 200 people? 1000 people?
* cut to save space*
Holey moley!
Thank you Leonal, you just made my decade.
What I'm more interested in is something that I can use when building a thorp, or a town, or a city, and answer questions like:
- What businesses would be in a town of 50 people? 200 people? 1000 people?
- What professions are in every town, vs. ones that are in only some towns?
- In fact, what are the professions (I have yet to see a good list of NPC professions, especially one with information about how commonly they're encountered in settlements)?
- For cities (which are district-based rather than building-based), what districts are almost always there vs. rare?
That, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg.
And that's the root of the problem. What you need, really, is a book that looks at the problem both from the side of a RPG writer looking to give a GM good tidbits, and from a the side of counter-factual economist (insert joke about all economists not caring about facts here), who knows enough history and has enough imagination to see how a Magical Middle Ages city would actually come together, to give GMs something to use, but without boring the pants off the reader.
Looked at another way, we're more or less #(*$(* until Pratchett starts co-authoring RPG books....
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The BEST city book I have ever had was Lankhmar: City of Adventure back in 1st edition days. You had a HUGE map of the city suitable for your wall. There was a full page reproduction of that wall map. Every single block had its buildings mapped out, streets and alleys were all there. The boo was divided into districts to make finding similar places or fluff easier. Every district had a district map showing the buildings and then HUNDREDS of locations, THOUSANDS of NPCs, more side treks than you could use in a life time of roleplaying... and with all that there was still so much room left over for individual GMs to customize locations and NPCs.
The culture of the city was clearly defined in the locations and people. The laws and customs were described. The economy made sense. It was the PERFECT city, against which ALL other cities have fallen short.
I've been pondering making a city based on his level of detail but unable to do so as a lone writer (even though the city I want to use was mostly developed by Mikaze and Set on these message boards).
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I don't know if I want an urban book as much as I would like a Kingdoms/Countries book. So tak the Kingmaker rules and expand them (more options, not more complicated), increase the Kingdom events list, buildings, etc. Include and possibly expand the Mass Combat Rules (I would like to see them before I really decide on that). And whatever else they can come up with along these lines.
i started a thread about this recently, called True empire building.
but i posted.
dragon issue 125, best economics system ever. taxes, population growth, economy for empires.
and then blue book DND>
a real empire building system, for running nations, not so much characters, but actual nations.
that would rock.
join the thread, we can pass around ideas.
